Postural Control Analysis of Early Stage Parkinson's Disease Patients by EEG, EMG, and Pressure Center Measurements during Virtual Reality Stimulation

In this work, it was decided to analyze patients with early-stage Parkinson`s disease. Today, PD is one of the most prevalent neurological disorders in the world, has no known cure and is usually characterized by motor dysfunctions. In most cases, treatment consists of surgery combined with drugs and/or physical therapy. Poor postural control is very common in people with Parkinson's disease. The BioVRSea setup was intended to evaluate the postural control response in 9 early-stage PD cases and 29 healthy controls of the same age, using a combination of measurements (i.e., EEG, EMG, CoP and HR). The main innovation consists in analyzing multiple biosignals simultaneously and combine EEG analysis with virtual reality. Brain activity showed relevant results in the alpha and theta bands in PD patients, while delta, alpha, beta and low gamma showed relevant results in healthy subjects. Theta and alpha frequencies are the ones providing best results to underline the differences between healthy and PD cohorts. Correlation analysis showed an inverse correlation between right soleus and right tibialis anterior muscles skewness. Key features of the ellipses (area, major and minor axis lengths) revealed a clear distinction between pathological and non-pathological cohorts in CoP analysis.  For these reasons, the BioVRSea setup might represent an informative evaluation method for early-stage PD.